Re: [xml-dev] Feasibility of "do all application coding in the XMLlanguages"?

From: Jonas Mellin <jonas.mellin@his.se>

To: Mukul Gandhi <gandhi.mukul@gmail.com>

Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:29:23 +0100

Mukul Gandhi wrote:
> Hi Roger,
> There are many software applications, which need imperative
> programming infrastructure (where we should be able to change program
> state at will, like using assignment statement as so on).
>
> Examples of such applications could be,
> 1. Complex business logic (say I am implementing a work flow for an
> insurance company)
> 2. Game programming :)
> 3. GUI programming
>
I do not think anyone mentioned the obvious infeasibility of systems
with limited resources in terms of processor capacity, memory, I/O
availability as well as working in potentially hostile environments
(e.g., no cooling possible, satellites). I partly work with wireless
sensor networks where the nodes we work with have 8 bit processors and 4
kB of memory (we also have nodes with more capacity, but they require
more battery power). We are considering using XML, BUT the scarceness of
resources as well as limited battery power makes the overhead of using
XML to great. We are considering the efficient XML (binary XML), since
sending and receiving messages is more costly than running a number of
clocks cycles/instructions to compress the message.
BTW, looking at sales figures, 99% of all sold processors are for
embedded systems and 1% is for servers, desktop applications, high end
computing etc (see, for example,
http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw52/budde.html). Most of
these embedded systems processors are at most 8 bit processors.
/Jonas Mellin
> and so on.
>
> To my opinion, none of the above tasks can be done (or easily done) in
> XML based languages.
>
> Whereas XML based languages are specialized to process XML data.
>
> On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 9:08 PM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> I am exploring the idea of "do all application coding in the XML languages."
>>
>> Here is a response from a colleague:
>>
>> "... in general XSLT is cool but limited. If your transform requires any "higher math" or advanced functionality or external code libraries (such as geometry coordinate system libraries), you almost always have to go back to a higher level language (such as Java) at some point."
>>
>> Does my colleague make a TRUE or FALSE statement?
>>
>> /Roger
>>
>
>
>
>
--
Carpe Diem!
===
Jonas Mellin, Assistant Professor in Computer Science
School of Humanities and Informatics, Building E-2
University of Skövde, P.O. Box 408, SE-541 28 Skövde, Sweden
Phone: +46 500 448321, Fax: +46 500 448399
Email: jonas.mellin@his.se, URL: http://www.his.se/melj